Did it or didn't it? That question circulated the web over the last 24 hours, with the internet abuzz with accusations that a Google Street View car had callously hit and then left a helpless donkey in Botwsana to roast in the sub-Saharan sun.
Google came out Wednesday to deny those accusations and revealed that contrary to the assumptions made over the morbid image of an overturned donkey, the "humble beast" was just fine.
"Because of the way our 360-degree imagery is put together, it looked to some that our car had been involved in an unseemly hit and run, leaving the humble beast stranded in the road," Google Product Manager Kei Kawai wrote in a Google Lat Long blog post.
The posting, titled "Never ass-ume," details the course of events that transpired on that dusty Kweneng road.
Donkey daze
According to Kawai, the donkey was simply laying in the road, "perhaps enjoying a dust bath," when the Street View car happened upon it.
The donkey righted itself and moved out of the way to safety as the car drove past.
"I'm pleased to confirm the donkey is alive and well," Kawai wrote.
Thanks to the same 360-degree imagery, Google's pictures seemingly prove that the donkey was in the road to begin with, then got up and curiously watched the car carry on.
Now, the 15-minutes-of-fame pack animal can go back to lazing about in the dirt, or whatever else it is donkeys like to do.
